There are multiple techniques for treating a tumor, e.g., radiation treatment, chemotherapy, and surgery, each of which may encompass several techniques. For example, the radiation treatment may be photon or proton. It can be very time-consuming to produce a treatment plan. And, only once a treatment plan has been produced may physician identify that the treatment plan is not suitable.
Currently, the physician will choose a treatment plan based on prior experience, e.g., radiation treatment using photons. The photon treatment plan is then generated. Once the photon treatment plan has been generated, the position analyzes the treatment plan to determine whether the treatment plan satisfies certain criteria (e.g., whether it falls below certain criteria). At that point, the physician has to generate a treatment plan for different treatment, e.g., using protons instead. At that point, the physician may choose between the two treatment plans, or possibly generate more treatment plans for other treatments.
As an example for radiation treatments, a physician can provide some kind of prescription and requirements for the plan, e.g., must save the parotid gland or spine, and the target or the cancerous tissue requires at least sixty grays (unit of radiation). A dosimetrist or physicist then spends several hours to create the treatment plan for a patient, where the treatment plan is for the selected treatment type. The dosimetrist or physicist tries to achieve a good plan by using optimization algorithms, manually placing fields from which direction to have the radiation travel, and setting some blocks to prevent radiation from hitting critical organs from certain directions. Only after all this work does the position review the treatment plan, possibly finding that the dose distribution of the radiation treatment plan doesn't fill all (or critical ones) of the requirements that the physicians has specified. The physician may decide that the treatment plan a sufficient, that the treatment plan for the previously selected treatment type needs to be refined further, or a new treatment plan for different treatment type should be generated.
A physician may be able to determine whether the optimized treatment plan is roughly what one would be able to achieve. When the optimized treatment plan is below expectations, further refinement may be chosen. But, such a process does not guide the physicians decision about whether to refine the treatment plan for the current treatment type, or generate a treatment plan for a new treatment type. Only notice that optimize is not acceptable, the physician may decide to try new treatment type at this late stage. For example, a physician may decide to try proton treatment, for example, because the proton facility is available. Again, a dosimetrist would use several hours to generate a new plan. And, the position would later evaluate what was possible to achieve. Thus, it a long process.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide new tools that allow a physician to determine early on what type of treatment plan should be pursued.